Thrash Rally | Top-Down Chills

[00:00:00] Aaron, okay, let's say you were in a rally race across America of like six people, what place would you come in? Dead last, because I would immediately turn and hit a wall. This is Neo Geo Go! Thrashing it up. Welcome back, everybody. What? I'm saying thrashing it up, I don't know, I never know who's supposed to talk first.

[00:00:29] I'm doing the intro, Aaron, Jesus Christ. You can thrash it up on your own time, okay? How dare you? Thrash Rally, released on November 8th, 1991, developed and published by Alpha Denchi. We're back to Alpha Denchi. Thrash Rally is a top-down rally racing game, as the name implies. Think something like Off-Road or Super Sprint, I guess, like other arcade games with a top-down view,

[00:00:57] but you can't see the whole course at once. You know how those games are just like the whole courses on this one screen? This follows you. I guess maybe a better reference might be RC Pro Ram, I guess, but it doesn't really play like that. But yeah, Aaron, I've never played Thrash Rally before now. I've never seen that at a Neo Geo cabinet, so this one was totally new to me. But I do really like those other top-down games that we just mentioned, like Off-Road or Super Sprint.

[00:01:25] I loved those games growing up, so I was excited to try this one. Yeah, I didn't know this one existed until we started doing this show, to be honest. Yeah, I too love a good top-down racing game. I think that kind of stems from fucking total millennial answer, but it all kind of stems from Kirby Air Ride and the... What is it called? Top Ride, I think? Yeah, I think it's called Top Ride. Yeah.

[00:01:52] I love mastering the physics of how your vehicle handles and swerving around the corners and shit and just feeling so cool. Yeah. It's a very fun thing. Yeah. Dude, Super Off-Road at the Arcade. I played the piss out of that game, dude. Oh my God. It was so much fun. So yeah, this type of thing is my jam. I never really got much into RC Pro Ram. I remember my friend had it, and I was like, I thought it was fun, but he was into that shit.

[00:02:21] Obviously, it has great sound design because Rare and David Wise, but it was never my favorite. I would rather play RC Pro Ram, though, than Thrash Rally. I think Thrash Rally is fine, but it doesn't... I don't know. I was expecting something a little better, I think. It's okay. Yeah. It doesn't do... It doesn't really do anything different from other games of the time.

[00:02:47] Like, yeah, RC Pro Ram, you could probably get the same ass experience out of RC Pro Ram that you would with this because it's just another top-down racing. It's a racing game, but it looks better. It sounds a little bit better, but it's fun. Of course, yeah, because the hardware, but... Well, I mean, so like, I guess I do like that it's rally racing because I do love rally racing games, whether it's, say, a rally or dirt. Oh my God, I played so much Dirt 5 at, like, PS5 launch. Oh my fucking God.

[00:03:17] I love that game. So, like, I like rally racing games. So, the idea of, like, a top-down one was very appealing to me. And the thing I love about rally racing video games is, like, when they give you the cockpit directions, you know, they tell you about the turns coming up, you know, and you get, like, you know, they flash a sign at you. Or even in Sega Rally, it's like, 50, easy rights or whatever. Oh my God, dude. I love that fucking cockpit announcer with you. It's so good.

[00:03:46] I miss Sega Rally. God damn it. Dude, can we... Can... Is it... How hard is this to emulate Dreamcast games? I want to play the Dreamcast version of Sega Rally 2 so bad now. It's a lot easier now. You should have a totally... Oh my God. A much easier time now than you would have a few years ago. But yeah, so, like, yeah, I love those directions, right? And normally, that would be an unfair ask for my game from 1991.

[00:04:13] But Neo Geo, up to this point, has exhibited a lot of voice acting. We hear it all over, like, the sports games and stuff, right? So I'm kind of surprised there isn't any call-outs about the... In the turns in this game. I guess maybe it's just... I don't know. This is fairly low budget, it looks like, compared to, like, other stuff. So maybe they just... That wasn't really in the cards. I just think that would have gone a long way towards the presentation, Aaron, to not make it feel so, like, kind of just generic. Yeah.

[00:04:43] Yeah, I think it probably would have helped, like, with the gameplay as well. Because, like, there would be times where I'd be coming up to a turn, and I'd see the sign... Not the sign, but, like, the... I guess, like, the warning coming up that, oh, you gotta take a right turn. I feel like a guy going, like, turn right, or turn right here. Something, anything that might have helped with the experience. Might have helped me register that a little bit better. Because, like, I just... I see the fucking arrow going this way and that way with, like, six million wiggles in it, and I'm like, fucking where am I going? What?

[00:05:14] Well, see, I like it because the reaction time is fun. As soon as you're waiting for that arrow, right? You're glued to the screen. So as soon as you see that, you better start reacting. Otherwise, you're not gonna make that turn. If you see the turn, it's too late. So it's like, you better start turning. So I think that part is fun. It just doesn't... I don't know. It's not super exciting. It doesn't have the flashiness of most other Neo Geo games up to this point, because Robo Army had a lot of that.

[00:05:43] Fucking even, what you call, 8-Man had a lot of flashiness to it. Yeah, it just kind of feels like... Like, phoned in a little bit. They were like, we need something that's not a beat-em-up. Something that... That's pretty much just something that's not a side-scrolling beat-em-up. And then they went, here's this. And it's totally fine. I mean, look, I think there's a reason why we never heard of this game until doing the show, right? I mean... Yeah. What can I say?

[00:06:11] Shit, I don't even remember this coming out on Arcade Archives, which is how I played it. Yeah. So I just went on there and said, okay, it's on here. So I guess I'll play it this way. I think the biggest bummer for me about this game is that the Dakar Paris rally mode is kind of a bust. Because I was like, okay, I would love to do this long point A to point B kind of top-down racing mode. But they very quickly throw a lot of random things on the course

[00:06:41] that you just can't avoid. There's weird bushes in the middle of the track. There's entire-ass elephants and shit. You know? And it's just like, okay, how am I supposed to see that coming? Like, there's not an arrow that pops up for that. Yeah, warning, bison crossing or something. Yeah. But it's just, it feels very unfair. So I don't know, man. That was kind of a bummer. I wanted that mode the most, and this game just does not let me have that.

[00:07:11] So... One thing that I thought was kind of cool about the game, I put a link in the notes for it, but the character portraits are kind of terrifying. Like, specifically M. Bastion. What's his name? D. Arend. Looks like Murr from Impractical Jokers. So that's kind of cool. C. Saint looks like the meme of the guy in the parka jacket, and he's holding up a beer. And they would have been just fine making him cartoonier,

[00:07:41] not like full-blown, you know, like Mickey Mouse cartoon style, but a little bit more cartoonier and less realistic. Might have looked a lot better, because these ones look pretty fucking unnatural. In this screenshot, did you enter your name as Ass? Yeah, I did. I always entered as Ass. Ass or Pooh. I do, okay, I do like games that make you enter your initials first before you start playing. I do think that's fun. I love games when games let you do that.

[00:08:10] So that is a plus. Thank you, Thrash Rally. Quite honestly, I don't really have fuck all else to say about, oh, I do like the continue screen where that dude, you're left on the side of the road, and that car is like hauling ass away from you. While it counts down. It's like they just left your ass on the side of the road, bitch. You're in the middle of this African safari, like fuck you, dude, whatever. Yeah, so like it's, yeah, it's a decent enough game. I'll give it a C plus. It's fine, right?

[00:08:40] It's fun enough, but it's not, it's just not remarkable in any way. I give it a C, like as middle of the road as possible. Cause yeah, like it's not, it's not bad. It's not offensive, but it's also like not really great. Um, C for me. What are we playing next time on Neo Geo Go, Aaron? Oh my God. Oh God. Fatal Fury. Finally, motherfucker. I can't wait. See you next week. Yeah, we're gonna Neo Geo go get fucked by zebras. Bye.

[00:09:10] Bye.